Challenge 1: Spider Jerusalem Rant

So, my first challenge is to write a Spider Jerusalem style rant. I’m going to put that behind a cut, because it’s going to be long and vile. As a small disclaimer, I am not a professional journalist, so this rant is not well-researched and I cannot back it up the way Spider could. That said this will be honest, however wrong it may be.

To get into character for this, I’ve removed most of my clothes and let a foul tempered cat in. I also got some herbal tea. I realize that should have been a fifth of cheap hooch chased by a cocktail of cocaine, heroin, hallucinogenics, amphetamines, and elephant tranquilizers, all supplemented by a constant supply of unfiltered Russian cigarettes, but I’m on a fucking budget here.

Last week we came within two hours of a government shutdown.

Our government is still functioning, at least as much as it ever does. Yes, they avoided the shutdown, and spent a lot of time patting themselves on the back for managing the absolute bare minimum expected of them. There was a lot of pointless shit argued, because 90% of the time your average politician tells 3% of the truth, and there was, as usual, a strange fascination with what people do with their sex organs. And really, that’s about what I expect from those assholes; scream about irrelevant shit, throw tantrums like spoiled children, and then congratulate themselves for not completely wrecking everything they touch. It’s a wonder any of them manage to dress themselves in the morning, really.

Based on my observations of our representative government, I figure voters fall into two main categories. First you have the insane shitheads, who want the GOP to protect them from Muslims, gay marriage, birth control, brown people, health care, public broadcasters, museums, unions, scientists, a minimum wage you can live on, themselves, and women. Then you have everyone else, who wants somebody, anybody to protect them from the GOP.

The system is beautiful in its simplicity, as the Republican party dives deeper into batshit insanity, the Democrats keep edging farther and farther right, like that creepy fuck on the bus who’s always trying to sit in your lap. The other, lesser parties might be able to change something if they’d work together, but fragmented as they are they just serve to keep the big two in charge. During the last election I noticed no fewer than three of these sad poseurs whose policies were almost identical. A paranoid man might think that’s deliberate.

So we wind up squabbling and screaming like a crowd of two year olds with diaper issues over minor issues, and often issues that no sane person would feel a need to argue about. And here’s where that paranoia creeps back in, because whichever group of pathetic whiny children is in power at the moment, the same things seem to happen: tax breaks for the rich, loopholes for large corporations, and channeling public funds into private businesses. It’s like the two-party system has become a circus act to distract from the one-money system we really live in.

There’s not actually an organized conspiracy here, it’s probably just a crowd of selfish, shortsighted cash-whores who managed to get their lips around a government teat and and been sucking as hard as they can ever since.

If you have enough money to throw around in your quest for more money, why not stack the deck? So you do what any business does, you invest. Fund politicians regardless of party and then while the nation screams itself hoarse over things like gay marriage or Planned Parenthood, issues too important to be ignored, but not big money issues, your interests are looked out for. The net effect is that both groups of sad, spoiled prostitutes wind up doing the same job, providing tax breaks to, and moving more and more money and power into the hands of, giant psychotic corporations that have proven time and again that they can’t even be trusted to look after their own long term best interests.

And we help them do it. We help by not getting involved in politics beyond the bare minimum we need to keep operating. We rant and rail about the latest hot topic, without ever getting into the details, the little gears and cogs that keep our country functional. And then we forget and move on. We don’t have time for follow-up and for examining the riders or even the text of every bill that wanders into congress like a toddler in a tiger cage. Dances with the Stars is on, after all.

People are too distracted by MP3 players, touch screen phones, laptops, video games, facebook and an infinite number of other compulsions to put any time or effort into seeing the pattern; and realizing that as long as we ignore the root of the problem, things will stay the same (until we go extinct as a species).

We’ve stagnated for generations, trading freedom for structure; forgetting all the attributes we have that make us human and lessening our quality of life.

Spider Jerusalem is the gonzo journalist protagonist from the Warren Ellis “graphic novel” series Transmetropolitan. Clearly drawing some inspiration from the late Hunter S. Thompson, he is not what any sane person would call a role model, but he does have journalistic integrity and a passion for the truth. And a strange fixation with dead dogs. It’s a weird comic.
I don’t think I really captured his style, I can read that without feeling like I need to wash my hands. But the rules just say I have to try, I’m not required to succeed.
I’m glad you liked it! Feel free to suggest something and thanks for reading!

Oh no, the Spider rant was a request. One of the rules of this blog is that I have to try to write anything anyone suggests in the comments, subject to a few restrictions detailed in the “about” page. So depending on my audience, the next post might be Shakespearean love poetry, sci-fi porn, or Harry Potter fanfic.

Ok, one SG-1 fanfic! That should be fun!
I own the movie, but I’m not very familiar with the show so I’ll need to do some research, watch some more episodes. Probably won’t have anything until next week.
Thank you for contributing!